


Surface Glitter

by anactoria



Series: Dean/Benny Challenge Ficlets [7]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-05
Updated: 2014-09-05
Packaged: 2018-02-16 05:49:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2258109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoria/pseuds/anactoria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The night they turn him loose, Benny wanders the city streets unmoored.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Surface Glitter

**Author's Note:**

> AU: The supernatural is known, hunters are government-sanctioned, and there's some sort of 'the-Initiative-from- _Buffy_ '-type programme going on.
> 
> Written for [deanbennychallenges](http://deanbennychallenges.tumblr.com/)' [week of prompts](http://deanbennychallenges.tumblr.com/post/94762320064/this-years-dean-benny-challenge-week-is-from-the) on Tumblr. Day #7 was a free day, so I took that as my prompt. :)
> 
> Unbetaed.

The night they turn him loose, Benny wanders the city streets unmoored.

Night or not, there’s more light out here than he’s seen in decades: arcing up above him in great cathedrals; smearing past him in the headlamps of _so damn many_ cars; shining out from storefronts pristine as museum cases. More sound than he’s heard in decades, too. The cars, the shriek of sirens, the _people_ , with their voices and their sideways glances and the blood rushing in their veins.

They’ve been warned. The publicity campaign’s been running for months, Benny knows that. He thinks they might even have quoted him in one of the pamphlets. But the humans are out in force—though whether to defend themselves or to look at the monsters, Benny couldn’t say—and this doesn’t feel like a night of caution. There’s laughter on the wind; recklessness, too. 

Benny wants no part of it. He isn’t acclimatized yet. The lights hurt his eyes. He has a headache that has nothing to do with them (you’d think voluntary admission and seven decades’ good behaviour would be enough to exempt him, but he was never that much of an optimist) and no idea he where he’s going. 

So, in the end, he drinks.

Liquor. He has no stomach to visit the feeding stations tonight, but after a couple blocks’ walk, he finds a bar with no _Humans Only_ sign on the door.

His kind are tough: he’d need to drink the bar dry before he got to be unsteady on his feet. But it’s been a long time and it burns going down, memories of human lightheadedness buzzing at the base of his skull. And maybe he’s caught a little of the night’s recklessness despite his best intentions, because when a kid with green fire in his eyes flashes him a grin like a red rag in a bullring, he raises two fingers to the bartender and goes over.

The kid quirks a smile that isn’t really a smile, when Benny sets the whiskey down in front of him; says, straight out, “You hoping I’ll be a hundred proof by the end of the night?”

Benny shrugs, eases into the chair opposite him. “I’m hoping you know better than that, brother.”

“I ain’t your brother,” the kid says. But after a moment he lifts his glass, a gesture that isn’t sure whether or not it’s ironic, and says, “Name’s Dean.”

\----

Dean has a room in a ratty hotel a couple streets away. The invitation takes Benny by surprise, but he goes.

That takes him by surprise, too. 

Dean lets Benny back him into the room, shove him up against the door as it closes. He angles his head away, his throat bared like a challenge. Benny feels the tension in Dean as he crowds in close, the way his body wants to drop into a fighting stance. But he doesn’t, and Benny presses his lips to Dean’s neck, murmuring, “If that’s what you’re looking for, I ain’t your man,” against the warm skin.

Dean goes still; actually closes his eyes for a moment. Opens them again. 

“That ain’t it,” he says, and Benny nods, _good_ , and kisses him.

It’s only when he gets Dean’s shirt off that Benny sees them, in the neon leaking through the slats of the window blind. Sigils, runes, words of protection in a dozen languages, twining up Dean’s arms. 

Benny knows what they are. The rumor is, they’ll keep a man from turning, though he’s never had occasion to see it for himself.

He lets the shirt flutter to the floor and takes a step back. Watches Dean’s face, the way his eyes shine in the halflight. He can’t read them.

“You hunt my kind,” Benny says. Just a statement. No use in making it an accusation.

Dean’s throat works. “I used to.”

Benny keeps watching him.

“Just so we’re clear,” Dean adds, after a moment. “The whole we’ve-tamed-the-vamps thing, all that Clockwork Orange shit? I ain’t sold. You can’t just up and turn a monster human. He’s gotta want it.”

Benny hasn’t been around a whole lot of people over the last seventy years, and with the ones he’s known, there hasn’t been much call for reading between the lines. Still, the pieces are falling into place. He’s seeing it now. Dean isn’t just some kid; not by anybody’s reckoning. The flirting, the bravado, the tasteless jokes: those are surface glitter. The trenches of sorrow run deep here.

“You knew somebody who did,” Benny says. He doesn’t bother making it a question.

Dean’s smile is a painful thing to see. “I had a brother,” he says. It makes sense, if they worked together. Hazard of the job. Benny’s known ex-hunters, inside. Even the ones who kept a little humanity inside of them were twisted up with bitterness—usually at the hunting partners who’d let them be taken in instead of just killing them. But, “He wanted it,” Dean goes on. “To be—good. Didn’t mean shit to the assholes who found him, but he did.”

Benny allows himself a mirthless smile of his own. “I had a lover,” he says. “She didn’t.”

Dean doesn’t answer that, just scrubs a hand over his eyes. Suddenly, he looks ten years older than he did at the bar, and dead tired. He leans over, picking his shirt off the floor.

It’s a conversation-ending gesture. Benny gets it, and that’s okay. 

He strides over to the window and cracks the blind. The city still looks wakeful out. “You want coffee?” he asks. “Something to eat?”

At the change of subject, Dean straightens. Surprised or relieved, or maybe neither. “You don’t eat,” he points out.

“I don’t _gotta_ eat,” Benny corrects him. “Don’t mean I can’t appreciate it.” He gets the soft suggestion of a laugh in return.

Still, “Nah,” Dean says. “Think I’m done for tonight.” He pauses, and there’s an edge of hesitancy in his voice when he says, “You can stay, if you want.” 

It isn’t an offer—not that kind of an offer, anyhow. This isn’t about a fuck anymore—or a fight, or an experiment, or whatever it was this started out as. 

But Benny’s—well, he’s pretty damn sure he’s in. He doesn’t even really know what it is yet, but Dean’s gone and landed him with something to prove.

He has his freedom. There are worse things he could do with it.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on [LJ](http://anactoria.livejournal.com) or [Tumblr](http://anactorya.tumblr.com)!


End file.
